Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Computing devices such as personal computers, laptop computers, tablet computers, cellular phones, and countless types of Internet-capable devices are increasingly prevalent in numerous aspects of modern life. Over time, the manner in which these devices are providing information to users is becoming more intelligent, more efficient, more intuitive, and/or less obtrusive.
The trend toward miniaturization of computing hardware and peripherals, as well as of sensors, detectors, and image and audio processors, among other technologies, has helped open up a field sometimes referred to as “wearable computing.” In the area of image and visual processing and production, in particular, it has become possible to consider wearable displays that place a very small image display element close enough to a wearer's (or user's) eye(s) such that the displayed image fills or nearly fills the user's field of vision, and appears as a normal sized image, such as might be displayed on a traditional image display device. Such technology may be referred to as “near-eye displays.”
Near-eye displays, also sometimes called “head-mounted displays” (HMDs), are fundamental components of wearable display-devices. A head-mounted display-device places one or more graphic displays close to a wearer's eye or eyes. A wearable computer processing system may generate the images on a display. Further, head-mounted displays may be as small as a pair of glasses or as large as a helmet.
Emerging and anticipated uses of wearable display-devices include applications in which users interact in real time with an augmented or virtual reality. Such applications can be mission-critical or safety-critical, such as in a public safety or aviation setting. The applications can also be recreational, such as interactive gaming.